Ask Jeeves Adds Directory, Direct Hit Results

Ask Jeeves has redesigned its home page and search results page. From the home page, you'll find category links just below the search box. These lead to the Ask Jeeves version of the Open Directory, where sites are ranked in order of popularity. That popularity is as determined by Ask Jeeves-owned Direct Hit, which uses clickthrough measurements to determine what are the most popular pages on the web.

Of course, you can still do keyword searching at Ask Jeeves. After you do a search, the results page has several key sections. At the top are the "normal" Ask Jeeves results, which come from their editors seeking the best sites that match a query. They come under a section that says, "I have found answers to the following questions."

After that, the next section says, "People with similar questions have found these sites relevant." The matches here come from the Direct Hit index of popular pages.

At the bottom of the page, the section that begins "I have also found these sites through other search engines" are meta search results that come from other major search engines.

Finally, along the right hand side of the page are new paid links. These come out of the former Direct Hit paid text ads system, which has now been rebranded the Ask Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network. If you tried Direct Hit paid links before and were disappointed because of poor clickthrough, things might change now that the links are appearing at Ask Jeeves. That service is far more popular than Direct Hit, giving your ads more exposure, and it is possible this may also translate into better clickthrough.

Be careful, however -- the page estimates for terms you bid on will be based on the previous months traffic. With Ask Jeeves now also delivering ads, the estimates are likely to underestimate the number of views you'll pay for. Consider monitoring your bids more closely, until the traffic estimates have normalized.

The U.K. Supreme Court has granted permission in part for Google to appeal against a ruling relating to a dispute over the user information through cookies via use of the Apple Safari browser.
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